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How To Control Sound Volume Level On Each Mac App

Thursday, February 12, 2015

My Macs are home to more audio recording, editing, and mixing apps than celebrities have gaffes and scandals. The latest is SoundBunny. This remarkable little app does something that Apple should put into OS X. Individual audio controls for each Mac app that uses sound.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this image of the SoundBunny control panel tells you everything you need to know.

What you see are the apps in OS X which use sound. SoundBunny gives you an individual volume control for each one. Set iTunes to be loud or soft. Set Mail’s incoming email notification sound to a lower volume, or mute the sound entirely.

You get the idea. Each app that uses sound can be individually controlled for volume or mute. This functionality has purpose. Set the volume on Mail so it’s nice and loud and drowns out iTunes if you’re expecting important email to arrive.

Adjusting the audio controls is equally simple. Drag the control knob to the left to reduce the volume. Drag it back to the right to increase the volume. Click the sound button on the right of each slider control to toggle sound on or off.

SoundBunny does require a restart once you’ve installed the app. What’s missing? I would dearly love to see a few sound enhancement functions for each app’s sound, and perhaps an equalizer feature, but those are minor requests. Otherwise, SoundBunny is sufficiently useful and so totally obvious that Apple should put similar controls in OS X Yosemite already.

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